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BBC has an article about the descendants of famous Nazis. Bettina Goering, great-niece of Hermann, decided to have herself sterilised (as did her brother).

""We both did it... so that there won't be any more Goerings," she explains. "When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'." [Is this related to Germanic notions of blood and family?]

I'll link to article at the bottom, but Bettina's actions got me thinking about what she did. It also seems to be a peculiar way of looking at things (though I understand her emotional response). Have I got murders and rapists in my bloodline? I'd be amazed if I didn't. Over the course of 150,000 years, how many people were killed by my relatives?

How responsible are we for our ancestors' actions? Is there some kind of formula we should use? Closeness of relative + number killed = X?

If Custer had children, do those children owe a debt to Native Americans? How about his grandchildren? My father was in the SeaBees and helped build the airstrip at Da Nang during the Vietnam war. Does that make me in some small part morally responsible for My Lai? Am I morally responsible for whatever my son did when he was in combat in Afghanistan?

How much guilt do we personally take on for Hiroshima and Nagasaki just by virtue of being American? That happened five years before my mother was born. Do I carry more than others because my grandfather was in the Army at the time? He wasn't involved and unless you count the roadbed of the Richardson Highway a crime there's not much there.

Not to veer totally off in another direction, but you can easily make the argument that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, horrible as they were, saved many, many lives overall. Yes, you can debate that based on other information (pending Soviet invasion, dissent in the Japanese cabinet), but I wouldn't say you can equate the A-bomb to things like Himmler.

If we want to get "big picture", if you were alive and contributing to the U.S. economy during the late 60s, then on some level, yes, you contributed to My Lai and a host of other atrocities in Vietnam, simply because you in some small part helped support that military. No amount of resistance to the war would change the fact that the dollars you earned and spent contributed to an economy that made those things possible. That being said, that's stretching the concept of "responsibility" very, very far. I mean, I live in the Midwest, which means I wouldn't be here unless very probably some white guy thought this land looked nice and wound up killing and/or dispossessing the people who once owned it, but how far back do you take the concept? It's kind of a pointless exercise; we're all guilty of something, because we're all part of large social and economic systems that rely on the actions of the past.

We are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors in any moral sense. It just really wouldn't do anyone any good.

Then thank him for preventing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands Japanese and the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. The US invasion plan for the Japanese mainland, Operation Downfall, wasn't going to be subtle considering it was going to kick off with the invasion of islands in the south, which would then be bulldozed flat so close air support bases could be established.

Yonder wrote:

At this point striking the Pope once with a sword is a completely reasonable action.

The deliberate firestorms in Dresden and Hamburg were much worse, in my view, than the atomic bombings. We knew that neither of those cities were of any military significance; we were purposely setting off firestorms as a terror weapon against civilians. (And Dresden was one of the most beautiful cities on the planet before we got started.)

Should the offspring of those people be somehow punished? I think that's a very clear "no way". Should they feel guilty? I'd say they'd be free to do so, but it would be incorrect, just like with Goering's relatives.

I think the discussion of the A bomb and the firebombing of German and Japanese cities is fascinating but off topic for the guilt responsibility. Though I will say that the latest hardcore history is about that very topic and very interesting.

On responsibility and guilt:

I don't think there is any responsibility whatsoever. Guilt is an emotion and either exists or not, notwithstanding any responsibility.

If Custer had children, do those children owe a debt to Native Americans? How about his grandchildren? My father was in the SeaBees and helped build the airstrip at Da Nang during the Vietnam war. Does that make me in some small part morally responsible for My Lai? Am I morally responsible for whatever my son did when he was in combat in Afghanistan?

A debt is a somewhat different concept than guilt. Guilt requires some level of control or influence over the outcome of an event. Custer's children didn't have any influence on custer's treatment of Indians. So they shouldn't have felt guilty about it.

I would argue that you are only as responsible as much as you benefit from it. If you told me that my parents literally raped and pillaged to get my vast wealth then I would probably have some responsibility to give it back in some way. But the further removed you are from the initial action you have less responsibility.

I think the discussion of the A bomb and the firebombing of German and Japanese cities is fascinating but off topic for the guilt responsibility. Though I will say that the latest hardcore history is about that very topic and very interesting.

+1 on going to listen to the latest Hardcore History podcast. I'd like to add that the flaw in Allied planning (bomb enemy population centers to break morale) was that in dictatorships the people are forced to fight on no matter what so morale is irrelevant. It's the reason it took ground troops flooding into Berlin to actually end the war in Germany, and why the biggest air bombing campaign in history could not break Communist Vietnam.

Anyhow, getting back to the subject at hand, I'd say there's waaayyy too much guilt over past bad things that white Americans have done. I remember in college there was some discussion about slave reparations, and many of my classmates flipped out when our school newspaper ran an editorial by David Horowitz stating why reparations for something that happened 150 years ago was a silly idea. Personally, I agreed with him. If we start saying that we need to rectify stuff that happened several generations ago, where do we stop? The only practical solution is to learn from the past and do your best not to repeat the mistakes.

Anyhow, getting back to the subject at hand, I'd say there's waaayyy too much guilt over past bad things that white Americans have done. I remember in college there was some discussion about slave reparations, and many of my classmates flipped out when our school newspaper ran an editorial by David Horowitz stating why reparations for something that happened 150 years ago was a silly idea. Personally, I agreed with him. If we start saying that we need to rectify stuff that happened several generations ago, where do we stop? The only practical solution is to learn from the past and do your best not to repeat the mistakes.

Bear in mind that a *government* is an ongoing entity, and it should at some point be held responsible for injustices. This could be long after the fact if they were not redressed earlier.

The difference between an ongoing enterprise like a government, corporation, political party, church or association and individuals or populations is that the former don't die out in a generation, and are explicitly assigned *collective* responsibility for their actions. Two different situations.

There's no materials safety sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word "NO", scrawled over and over again in charred blood. - Randall Munroe

When you consider the legacy of the Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America and the continued violence against the indigenous, it is pretty hard to make the case that there is no responsibility.

There is no responsibility. At that level, we're talking of the social and cultural movement of people against people. At that level, both government and religion are simply facets of the broad will of the people, taken as a whole. To my knowledge, there is no such thing as guilt on that sort of a scale. Populations compete, and the losing one gets eradicated. That's not an argument for its morality or for its legitimacy; it just is.

"Government" is a easy scape goat for the misdeeds of the past; until you realize that when governments change, it's often the same people who remain governed and who act according to the trending behaviors; slightly modified by whatever change of heart or mind the change in government reflects (sometimes none at all).

Americans were slaughtered and virtually enslaved when the Spanish and the Portugese invaded; and slaughtered again when the British and the French came to take their lands. Who is going to take responsibility for that?

I went to college with a girl who claimed to be a descendent of Rudolph Hess. She also swore that she would never breed. Of course, she hated children...so I'm not sure it was the Nazi thing that bothered her so much as it was the screaming and diaper thing.

Seth wrote:

I'm pretty sure, statistically, coffee increases violence more than marijuana....I'm going for my second cup and when I get back I'm bringing a shovel.

If they ended their bloodline because they were afraid that there was a propensity to commit evil acts in their blood, then doesn't the recognition of the possibility and desire to put an end to it, make them not evil? It seems that their consideration of this act in a serious approach, would prove that they are unaffected by any potential affliction.

My take on the Goering thing, honestly, is that whether or not they ought to, they feel an unremitting sense of guilt for what members of their family did in the past. And, they have no wish to put children into the same position they're in.

I think that a more positive thing to do in such a situation would be to work to do good in order to redeem the family. But... I can also imagine that just leading to more feelings of guilt upon the thought that nothing they could possibly do could offset such a heinous thing.

It's not logical for descendants to be weighed down by their ancestors' sins. But that doesn't mean they won't feel that they are, or that we can discount those feelings.

On the other side, we should of course never ever countenance anyone else blaming or punishing those descendants. It is one thing to feel weighed down by guilt and shame. It is quite enough to heap guilt and shame upon someone else.

It's not logical for descendants to be weighed down by their ancestors' sins. But that doesn't mean they won't feel that they are, or that we can discount those feelings.

Why can't we discount those feelings? This is a less extreme form of the man who walks into the police station and confesses to a famous crime he didn't commit. We discount his feelings because he's clearly irrational. I get being ashamed of your ancestors, but shared guilt? No. Not possible. No more reasonable to believe that than to believe that the moon emits light.

It's not logical for descendants to be weighed down by their ancestors' sins. But that doesn't mean they won't feel that they are, or that we can discount those feelings.

Why can't we discount those feelings?

Semantic problem. To discount someone's feelings is to say that they don't really feel that way, or that their feelings aren't legitimate or important. And it's never reasonable to tell someone else how they feel about something, or to suggest that their feelings are irrelevant.

That's different from suggesting that there's no logical basis to those feelings.

It's okay to say "I don't think you should feel guilty, and here's why." But you can't legitimately say "You don't really feel guilty" or "I'm sure you really don't feel [em]that[/em] guilty, you should just suck it up." There are few things more offensive than telling somebody else how [em]they[/em] feel.

I'm sure that Bettina Goering knew that her feelings of guilt were illogical. And I'm sure that she tried to get past them. But in the end, she continued to feel that guilt, however illogically.

I assume that these people feel guilty because they say they feel guilty. Their sincerity isn't an issue.

On the second issue, 'legitimate' is defined as "according to law; lawful" or "in accordance with established rules, principles, or standards" or "in accordance with the laws of reasoning; logically inferable; logical" (these at least are the ones listed that would apply in this situation).

By that standard, their feelings of guilt are not legitimate because there is no legal standard, no established rule or principle, and no process of logical reasoning that would make a niece of Goering guilty of her uncle's crimes.

That's one way to take "legitimate". However, I would argue that if you start talking to someone about whether their feelings are legitimate or not, they'll take you to mean "your feelings aren't real", or "you're stupid for feeling that way", which is un-cool.

Regardless, this is just further down the semantic rabbit-hole. What I was trying to say was: If someone feels guilty, and continues to feel guilty even though they know they have no real reason to, you have to respect their choices about how to handle those feelings. (Respect meaning "accept that it's their choice and not yours, even if you believe you would have made a different choice". And, of course, assuming the choice is not something that interferes unreasonably with other peoples' lives. etc. etc.)

If you tell them "you should have done this different thing instead" or "you should have been able to get over the feelings because they were irrational" or the like, particularly without having been in a similar situation yourself, you're an asshat.

(If you say "How can we help people deal with feelings like this better in the future?" or think that the outcome was tragic, that's fine.)

That's one way to take "legitimate". However, I would argue that if you start talking to someone about whether their feelings are legitimate or not, they'll take you to mean "your feelings aren't real", or "you're stupid for feeling that way", which is un-cool.

I didn't say stupid. I said irrational or nutty. So let's leave the question of intelligence out of it.

This is a board in which people constantly discuss whether the beliefs of others are valid or rational. If Republicans feel that gay marriage is wrong, or religious people question evolution, or someone suggests that the poor are poor because they're lazy- these are all personal beliefs that we ask be supported by evidence or be subject to question. Yet somehow, on this particular issue, questioning whether someone's personal belief makes sense is being an "asshat."

We're talking about two completely different things, and have been the whole time. I'm trying to illustrate to you what the other thing (the thing I'm talking about, and that you're not) is, but you keep going back to the thing that you're talking about. The thing you're talking about is totally okay. The thing I'm talking about is not okay. And I'm not sure how to get across to you that the thing I'm talking about is not the same thing as what you're talking about, because every time I do you keep assuming it into being what you're talking about.

How about instead of talking about legitimate vs. illegitimate, we talk about normal vs abnormal? For example, survivor's guilt is not rational or legitimate, but it's normal: there's nothing psychologically wrong with you if in response to being the only person who survives a disaster like a plane crash where you were just a passenger, you wind up with feelings of guilt.

How about having the discussion of whether being related to people considered by your culture to be so evil they're basically considered the Worst Thing Ever with that as the paradigm? Not about reason or legitimacy, but about whether you've got to have some kind of independent, pre-existing psychological issue that makes you abnormal to have these feelings of guilt in response to knowing your family history is this dark?

Further absurdity; Suppose we conceded that an individual is in any way responsible for the crimes of their bloodline, you immediately get the awkward problem of child abuse type situations - the victim is now responsible for the crimes committed against themselves which I would hope we can all agree is nonsense.

To the moon wrote:

The ending isn't any more important than any of the moments leading to it.